On the right path

By Lenny Megliola, Metro West Daily News

FRAMINGHAM - This seems so safe now, for Josue Almodovar, separated just far enough from the nightmares that were real. Not a state of mind. Nightmares that were lived, not dreamed. The horror in front of him. At his feet, literally.

"I lived in a bad neighborhood," says Almodovar, softly and matter-of-factly too. "I saw a lot of bad things." You have to ask, Like what? And he doesn't hesitate.

"I saw a guy shot right in front of me. A drug dispute, I guess. I saw a lot of guys stabbed. My cousin died of HIV. Doing drugs.

"I lost my best friend a few years ago. He got shot."

We get the picture, and Almodovar fleshes it out. The old neighborhood sat at the mean streets of Holyoke, where crime was king. Better keep your mouth shut and just shuffle off. Almodovar's mother, Mayra, had four sons. She was on welfare. Husband, gone. "I didn't meet my real dad until I was seven," says Almodovar. Now he has a step-father. It's an all too familiar story from the dark side of the street.

It was a time and place where staying alive was the trick. Dreams were for other people with green lawns, a sparkly SUV and an education.

At Holyoke High, Josue Almodovar almost never cracked a textbook. He admits it. Well, not admit. He's just telling the truth. "I didn't do school, basically." His grades were terrible. If the tall, slender Almodovar had a gift, it was for basketball. Is this starting to sound like one of those stories?

"I didn't know what I was going to do when I got out of high school," he says. All he had was his game. No backwater place, no kid with any talent, escapes college recruiters. "I saw a lot of them at my games," says Almodovar, "then they saw my grades. That's when everything went downhill." No recruiter would touch him. Twenty-two points per game his senior year wasted.

One day an older man Almodovar trusted told him he could help him get in a school. It wasn't a con job. Almodovar enrolled at Lasell College, in Newton. He'd have to get grades to keep him eligible for hoops. It never got to that. "I tried to play there but me and the coach had our differences," he says.

One chance blown. One more coming up.

Almodovar's older brother, Omar, was playing some pretty good hoops for Framingham State College. Josue would go to some of the Rams' games. It didn't take much to coax him out of the old neighborhood, even for one night. He would find any excuse to hang around Framingham with his brother. He made new friends. "After high school I really didn't think about college," says Almodovar. He had no reason to. This was changing.

One day at basketball practice coach Don Spellman asked Almodovar if he'd consider enrolling at FSC. Spellman had seen him play in a summer league in Hyde Park. The kid was pretty good. Although he didn't play basketball at Lasell, the second year he was there his marks improved.

Almodovar was getting some good advice. His older brother, Osvaldo, became "my father figure. He's helped me mature. He taught me and my brothers everything we had to know about real life." Osvaldo is in law school. It can be done.

"I have a stepfather who helped me a lot," says Almodovar. When he was four years old and all the kid had to look forward to was shooting hoops, his godfather, Jim Jackson, stepped in. "He taught me the basics of the game."

At the top of the pyramid is his mother. "She kept us together." Mayra wasn't going to lose her kids to the drug-infested streets.

Omar was Framingham State's captain four years ago. Now he's Spellman's assistant. Josue lives with his girlfriend in Framingham. This is starting to feel like home. "Framingham State has helped me get away from where I don't want to be, which reminds me of all the negativity." The bloody streets. Journeys back to Holyoke have become fewer. His mother has moved to a better neighborhood. The sunshine slips through.

But it's all up to Josue. He's a six-foot-four junior averaging 21 points and 10 rebounds for the Rams. Not that the numbers came out of the blue. Last year he averaged 15 and 8; his freshman year 18 and 6. "He was a highly-touted kid," says Spellman. "We were lucky to get him. He's been our leading scorer and rebounder for three years." Almodovar is on pace to become the Rams' second all-time scorer.

He can score down on the blocks, take it to the rack and is hitting 35 percent of his 3-pointers. "I make sure I score," he says. "That's what I do." Recently, he fell back on his class work. It caused him to miss two games. He was the most disappointed one. He might try out for the baseball team. He's a pitcher. Southpaw. He's going to have to make the grades in order to play.

Basketball was the constant when the brothers were growing up, a ton of one-on-one, Josue the youngest always getting schooled. "It toughened me up. But it's a different story now." Put your money on baby brother.

He has come far. The basketball talent paid off. You don't have to remind him how it might have turned out if he didn't have game. "I might have been selling drugs or something." That's not hyperbole either.

He is sitting in the near-empty FSC gym, telling his story, waiting for the bus that'll take the Rams to a game at Bridgewater State. He's wearing a flat-billed Yankees hat. Lot of Yankees fans in the western part of the state. Josue Almodovar smiles.

His left eye is a mess. Bloodshot on the inside, black and purple around it. On the cheekbone an inch-long horizontal gash looks red and raw.

And you think: that's nothing, back in the neighborhood. Hell, that'd be a good day. "I got an elbow in practice," he explains.

Nothing at all, on the road to making something of himself.